The first printed book in Syriac: a unique New Testament with handwritten notes from 16th-century Reformers

[Biblia syriaca - NT]. [Kethabha dh-Ewangeliyon Kaddisha]. Liber Sancrosancti Evangelii de Iesu Christo Domino & Deo nostro.

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Not merely the first book to be printed in Syriac, but the influential New Testament edited and supplemented with a primer by Widmanstetter. This copy was owned by a sixteenth-century Heidelberg student, and includes dedicatory inscriptions from several notable contemporary theologians. Containing pious exhortations in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French to the "optimo adolescenti" Michael Hortinus, this volume was clearly an object of study and devotion for him as well as a personal treasure.

The idea that Syriac was the mother-tongue of Jesus made the production of a printed Bible in the language an item of considerable interest for European scholars at a time when the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were redrawing the continent's religious landscape, and cries to return to the original meaning of Scripture were loud. Although slightly erroneous (the Aramaic spoken by Jesus would have been different from the Edessan Aramaic that formed the basis of Classical Syriac), the title-page of Widmanstetter's primer proclaims it "the common and vernacular tongue of Jesus Christ, his Virgin Mother and all Jews at the time of the Christian redemption and the preaching of the Gospels".

It was this edition of the Syriac New Testament that was used by one of the scholars who adds his inscription to this very copy: namely, Immanuel Tremellius (1510-80), an Italian convert from Judaism and noted Hebraist, from 1549 Reader at Cambridge and from 1560 Professor at Heidelberg. His new Latin translation of the Bible from Syriac and Hebrew made a great impression on Refomers throughout Europe.

Among the other figures active in Heidelberg in the 1560s represented by their inscriptions are Caspar Olevianus (1536-87), a reformist professor and preacher; Petrus Colonius (Petrus van Keulen, c. 1530-71), a Calvinist refugee from Metz; and Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), an Italian-born authority on the Eucharist.

The work of the philologist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (1506-57) with the assistance of Moses of Mardin, a Syriac priest, this landmark first edition of the Syriac scriptures in their classic "Peshitta" version (produced between the second and fifth centuries AD) is present in its 1555 first printing. Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia and Hungary and future Holy Roman Emperor, financed the undertaking. The printer Michael Zimmermann had already been the first in German-speaking Europe to print books in Arabic, and the Syriac type was specially commissioned from the great French orientalist, Guillaume Postel. Widmanstetter augmented his edition with an introduction to the Syriac language, illustrating its features and illustrating basic texts such as prayers in parallel columns of Latin, Hebrew, and Syriac, both in its own alphabet and in Roman transliteration. Our copy also shows unique signs of use in this section, probably by a reform-minded Protestant reader: some passages in prayers invoking the intercession of the Virgin Mary are struck through.

The 1555 printing of the New Testament was mainly for presentation, and in 1562 a second printing was produced from the same sheets, with the title reset. This copy is one of a small number of the 1562 printing to have the Syriac letters printed in red on the title-page with vowel points in black, rather than vice-versa. Unlike in many copies, the word "Quemadmodum" at the foot of a****2r is correctly spelled. Overall, only 1000 exemplars were printed, of which 500 were for distribution in Europe and 500 were entrusted to Moses of Mardin for distribution to Syriac churches in the East.

A highly unique example of an already rare work: copies of the Widmanstetter Peshitta are rarities on the market, with Rare Book Hub recording only four others for sale in the past 25 years, the most recent ones not in as good condition as this.

The groundbreaking Bible that left its mark on Europe's reformers, who in turn left their marks on this copy.